After concluding in the introduction that different things are beautiful in different ways, the first section of the treatise focuses on sensory beauty or beauty of bodies. Rejecting symmetry as a sufficient criterion for beauty, Plotinus explains that things in this world are beautiful to the extent that they participate in form and to the extent that shapeless matter is dominated by shape and the formative principle . Sensory beauty stirs the soul and helps it to recognise and remember transcendental (...) beauty. (shrink)

Plotinus (c. AD 205-270) can be regarded as the greatest Greek philosopher of late Antiquity, and as the father of Neoplatonism. His Enneads (`the nines') are now recognised as seminal works in the development of Western thought. This book is the only detailed scholarly commentary available on this part of Plotinus' work, and should be invaluable to all scholars interested in ancient philosophy and early Christian theology. All Greek in the commentary is translated.

v. 1. The ethical treatises, being the treatises of the first Ennead with Porphyry's Life of Plotinus, and the Preller-Ritter extracts forming a conspectus of the Plotinian system . Psychic and physical treatises; comprising the second and third Enneads.--v. 2. On the nature of the soul [being the foruth Ennead] The divine mind, being the treatises of the fifth Ennead. On the One and Good being the treatises of the sixth Ennead.